OXFORD, ENGLAND—Capuchin monkeys living in Brazil’s Serra da Capivara National Park have been using stone tools to open cashew nuts for at least 700 years, or about 100 generations, according to an investigation conducted by a team from Oxford University and the University of São Paulo. Michael Haslam, head of Oxford’s Primate Archaeology project, said in a Los Angeles Times report that the tools changed little over time, suggesting that the capuchins “are very good at transmitting the behavior over and over again.” The tools include small, hard stone hammers and sandstone anvils, which are left in caches at cashew processing sites. Haslam and his colleagues say the tools are the oldest non-human tools found outside of Africa, and the oldest-known tools not made by humans or chimpanzees. “It may be that part of the reason that capuchins were able to colonize this area is that they found a technological solution—stone tool use—to overcome these plant defenses,” Haslam said. Capuchins are thought to have arrived in the region a half-million years ago. Further excavation could reveal a long history of capuchin tool use. For more, go to "Earliest Stone Tools."
